DEMOCRAT Gov. David Ige called the entire episode “a nightmare,” and officials said they would suspend the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s internal testing system until new protocols are in place to prevent it from happening again.

For nearly 40 nail-biting minutes, so were millions of other Hawaii residents and vacationers. Video emerged of adults removing manhole covers and lowering children into sewers in a desperate attempt to escape a ballistic missile hurtling their way. People broke into tears, told relatives they loved them and scattered back to their homes and hotels, unsure what to do next.

Finally, at 8:48 a.m., 38 minutes after the alerts went out, authorities announced it was a false alarm, a mistake, simple human error.

Gov. David Ige called the entire episode “a nightmare,” and officials said they would suspend the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s internal testing system until new protocols are in place to prevent it from happening again.

“Today is a day most of us will never forget,” Ige said in a statement. “A terrifying day when our worst nightmares appeared to become a reality. A day where we frantically grabbed what we could, tried to figure out how and where to shelter and protect ourselves … said our ‘I love yous,’ and prayed for peace.”

Until the all-clear was given, people desperately tried to get information and swamped the 911 system.

“The bad thing is we tried to call 911 and we were really frustrated that nobody picked up the phone,” said Pamela Spitze, a retired community college training program staffer. “It took about 40 minutes before we were told it was a mistake.”

According to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, the false alarm happened when an employee, whom it would not identify, hit the wrong button during routine tests.

Richard Rapoza, spokesman for the emergency management agency, said the worker who sent out the erroneous alarm “didn’t realize his error until he received the alert on his own cell phone.”

In an interview, Rapoza also said it took 38 minutes to cancel the alert because a process had not yet been created to cancel false alarms and the agency had to seek authorization from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send out the all-clear and to use the civil alert system to send out the message that there had been a false alarm.

Ige apologized to island residents and tourists for the panic the mistake caused.

“I know firsthand how today’s false notification affected all of us here in Hawaii, and I am sorry for the pain and confusion it caused. I, too, am extremely upset about this and am doing everything I can to immediately improve our emergency management systems, procedures, and staffing,” he said.

Because of growing tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, Hawaii has been preparing for the possibility of a nuclear attack, and TV commercials warn residents to “get inside, stay inside” in the event of an attack. A nuclear warning siren, a holdover from the Cold War blared in December, the first such test in more than three decades.

The governor said Saturday’s scare should prompt some reflection on relations between Pyongyang and Washington. “I encourage all of us to take stock, determine what we all can do better to be prepared in the future — as a state, county and in our own households. We must also do what we can to demand peace and a de-escalation with North Korea so that warnings and sirens can become a thing of the past,” he said. –LA Times

Watch the Democrat governor apologize for the false missile alert. He never once mentioned it was his incompetence that led to him not being able to tell Hawaii’s residents that the alarm was not real. Watch, as he attempts to explain the reason it took so long to get “timely cancellation” out to cell phones. Laughably, Ige mentions how quickly they got to Twitter to correct their mistake at about the 1:15 mark:

So, why did it take 38 minutes for Hawaiians to find out the missile attack alert was fake? Two words…total incompetence”.

The DEMOCRAT governor of Hawaii wanted to inform the public that they would not die in a ballistic missile attack — but he forgot his Twitter password.

Gov. David Ige said Sunday that he could not access his Twitter account on the morning of Jan. 13 — while Hawaiians were reeling after receiving the false emergency missile alert on their cellphones.

“I have to confess that I don’t know my Twitter account log-ons and the passwords,” Ige said, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

“So certainly that’s one of the changes that I’ve made. I’ve been putting that on my phone so that we can access the social media directly.”

Seventeen minutes after the ballistic missile alert was sent to millions, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency released a follow-up alert telling people it was a mistake.